It’s said that people don’t remember anything before a certain age. I’m not sure exactly when that is, but I think I heard it’s somewhere around age three (some even suggest six). I don’t completely agree with that, though. I think there are some memories that stick in our minds much more easily than others, no matter what our age. I think that’s why some people remember some things from when they were very young – younger than the age that ‘they’ say we can remember.
I have two examples. First, I had a fever when I was really young. I think I was under two years old at the time (my mom said she thinks it was even maybe closer to one year). It was a very high fever, and I was in the hospital. They had me lying on some cold sheets that maybe even had some ice under them. I remember saying I was cold, and my mom trying to explain to me that they had me doing that because I had a fever. I knew a fever meant having a high temperature, which didn’t make sense to me. I kept insisting that I couldn’t have a fever because I felt cold.
I also remember that my mother had to get urine samples from me for a bladder infection. I was only 2 or three at the time. I very clearly remember sitting on the toilet upstairs in my grandma’s house, crying because I didn’t want to go into a cup.
See, even though I was very young, I remember these times because of the strong emotions attached to them. In both of them, I was unhappy and uncomfortable about something caused by medical reasons.
Early memories are very sketchy – they almost always consist of fleeting moments, with little or no detail to them.
For example, I vaguely remember playing a board game called Don’t Spill the Beans with some neighbor kids when I was probably between three and five years old. It’s a memory that’s more like a photograph than a video, though!
I also remember, from around the same time, that I used to visit the lady next door, who taught me how to make homemade barbeque sauce, and fed me vanilla ice cream. The only other thing I remember about her is her laugh. She had two sons, and I hope to contact them some day, once I figure out how to find them.
When I was in elementary school, I remember having to draw a tree for our art class. We went out on the playground and had to choose a tree. We then had to sketch that same tree for each season. Another time, we had to use a foam tray (like the ones used to pack meat in grocery stores), and some construction paper to make a diorama. I waited a bit too long to do the project. Well, I waited until the night before it was due, actually. I didn’t have much time to create it, and wasn’t really good at anything artistic anyway (which probably contributed to my reasons for procrastinating). I hastily cut out a tree and an admittedly crooked house. I glued them on the tray and added some cotton balls for snow, I guess. Even to my young eyes, I knew it wasn’t very well done. I had to put a title on it, and I guess inspiration struck when I looked at the sparse and not well done ‘scene’. I titled it something like, “…and the rest all just blew away”. I also remember my mom laughing about that.
There are a few other fleeting moments that occasionally pop into my head. I remember getting disclosing tablets and apples at school when we had our dental presentation. I remember being happy that my birthday wasn’t during the school year, because I didn’t want to be in the spotlight for it.
There’s something nice about remembering things from the past. The same with looking at pictures from years ago, which is something else I’ve been doing off and on lately.
I hope to write more articles about my memories, and hope to hear about yours as well!
